WASHINGTON
Democratic lawmakers denounced federal authorities Tuesday for not intervening in the highly publicized case of six Black high school students charged with the beating of a White student, citing racist noose-hanging incidents far beyond the attack in the small Louisiana town of Jena.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing with federal officials and community activists examining the case of the teenagers known as the Jena Six. The incident happened after nooses, a symbol of the lynching violence of the segregation era, were hung from a tree on a high school campus.
Democratic lawmakers, many of them Black, blasted federal authorities for staying out of the local prosecutor’s case against the six, particularly that of Mychal Bell, who is currently in jail after a judge decided he violated the terms of his probation for a previous conviction.
“Shame on you,” Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee said to Justice Department officials, directing most of her fury at Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for Louisiana’s western district and the first Black person to hold that position.
“As a parent, I’m on the verge of tears,” Jackson Lee said.
“Why didn’t you intervene?” she asked repeatedly, raising her voice and jabbing her finger in the air as some in the audience began to applaud.
Committee chairman John Conyers, a Democrat, called for quiet before Washington spoke.
“I was also offended, I too am an African-American,” Washington told the panel. “I did intervene, I did engage the district attorney. At the end of the day, there are only certain things that the United States attorney can do.”
Following that exchange, Conyers pointed out he had invited the local district attorney, Reed Walters, to testify, but he declined. At that, some in the audience yelled out, “subpoena him!”
Since the Jena case made headlines, there have been a number of other nooses found in high-profile incidents around the country in a Black Coast Guard cadet’s bag, on a Maryland college campus, and, last week, on the office door of a Black professor at Columbia University in New York.
The Department of Justice has created a task force to handle noose-hanging investigations in five states. It investigated the Jena matter but decided not to prosecute because the federal government typically does not bring hate crimes charges against juveniles, Washington said.
Black lawmakers and activists said more forceful action by the Bush administration was needed to squelch what they claim is a sharp rise in racism in the United States.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York-based civil rights activist, said that decision shows unfairness in a criminal justice system that declined to charge White students for a hate crime because they are minors, but initially chose to charge the six teens in the beating case as adults.
“These nooses were hung over a year ago sir. So I know that the wheels of justice turn slow, but they seem to be at a standstill,” said Sharpton. “That’s why we’re seeing nooses all over America.”
The senior Republican on the panel, Lamar Smith of Texas, said, “more than anything what we need is an effort to reduce racial tension … . What we do not need is stoking racial resentment.”
Several other Republicans on the panel questioned whether the White beating victim, Justin Barker, had been forgotten in all the uproar, but Rev. Brian Moran, president of the Jena chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that the most pressing issue is justice for the six teens facing criminal charges.
More than 20,000 demonstrators gathered recently in Jena to protest what they perceive as differences in how Black and White suspects were treated, but the cases against the Jena Six remain unresolved.
Last week, a judge sentenced Bell to 18 months in jail after a judge determined he violated the terms of his probation for a previous conviction.
Racial tensions began rising in Jena in August 2006 after a Black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for White students. Three White students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended by the school but not prosecuted.
–Associated Press
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